Mahathir: Greed drives merchants of death

KUALA LUMPUR: The weapons trade is huge, noted former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in his latest blog posting. “The warplanes, tanks, warships, rockets, missiles, submarines etc cost billions of dollars.”

“The income from the sale of arms can contribute much to the wealth of a country.”

Not surprisingly, added Mahathir, the merchants of death are therefore not too choosy on where they sell their arms. “Their customers may be oppressive dictators and corrupt Prime Ministers.

“They may condemn these people for not being democratic and less oppressive.”

Ironically, they would tone down their criticism if these same people offered to buy expensive arms from them, he charged. “The moaning and decrying over the injustices and oppression of dictators are just side-shows to assuage their conscience.”

“It’s the arms peddlers who promote corruption and dictatorial oppression of many governments in the world.”

Mahathir was commenting on the sophisticated arms being used in the fratricidal wars being fought in a number of Arab ex-colonies. “There’s no way for these countries to develop and produce such sophisticated weapons.”

He conceded that they may produce primitive bombs and rockets, but the tanks, armoured cars, machine guns and missiles must be bought from developed countries. “These developed countries decry the arms trade as a business.”

“However, there can be no doubt that they are the ones in fact most involved in the trade.”

The governments dedicated to increasing the wealth of their countries realised the importance of international trade, continued the former Prime Minister. “This was especially so after the loss of the European empires.”

“The empires had a policy of imperial preference which ensured the monopoly of imports and exports from and to the colonial territories.”

The greatest of these imperialist countries was Britain, reminded Mahathir. “It became the richest and the most powerful country in the world.”

After WWII, the European imperialists lost their empires and the trade monopoly that they enjoyed, pointed out Mahathir. “Strong competition from East Asian countries reduced their trade even more.”

Even so, they still enjoyed good incomes from selling arms, lamented Mahathir. “To generate more exports of arms they need to have proxy wars being fought by unsuspecting countries.”

“The proxy wars are especially between the countries they created during their imperial heydays.”